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BAGHDAD: Kurdish authorities have sent thousands more troops to the oil region of Kirkuk to confront threats from Iraq’s central government, the vice president of the autonomous Kurdistan region said on Friday.
Tens of thousands of Kurdish Peshmerga soldiers were already stationed in and around Kirkuk and another 6,000 have arrived since Thursday, Kosrat Rasul said, amid mounting tensions between the northern territory and Baghdad.
Iraq’s government has taken a series of measures to isolate the region since the Kurds’ Sept. 25 referendum on independence, including banning international flights from going there and pushing for a halt to its crude oil sales.
Iraqi Prime Minister Haider Al-Abadi has repeatedly said he has no plans to go further and actually attack the territory.
But the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG)’s Security Council expressed alarm late on Thursday at what it said was a significant Iraqi military buildup south of Kirkuk, “including tanks, artillery, Humvees and mortars.”
“These forces are approximately 3 km from Peshmerga forces. Intelligence shows intentions to take over nearby oil fields, airport and military base,” it said in a statement.
An Iraqi military spokesman said military movements near Kirkuk are meant to “inspect and secure” the nearby region of Hawija recaptured from Daesh militants a week ago.
“The Iraqi armed forces are advancing to retake their military positions that were taken over during the events of June 2014,” an army general told AFP by telephone, asking not to be identified.
He said federal troops had already taken one base west of Kirkuk on Friday morning after Peshmerga fighters withdrew during the night without a fight.
The Peshmerga’s Kirkuk commander, Sheikh Jaafar Mustafa, said his forces had withdrawn from areas they had recently entered during fighting against Daesh in the west of the province.
“We withdrew to our lines in the area around Kirkuk and we will defend the city in the event of an attack,” he told a news conference.
“If the Iraqi Army advances, we will fight.”
Kurdish media reported that the Peshmerga had withdrawn from around 72 square km of territory.
Mustafa said there had been an attempt to negotiate an agreed disengagement of forces through Al-Abadi, but it had been overruled by field commanders.
A top aide to Iraqi Kurdish leader Masoud Barzani vowed that Peshmerga forces would defend their positions “at any cost.”
“Thousands of heavily armed Peshmerga units are now completely in their positions around Kirkuk,” Hemin Hawrami said.
“Their order is to defend at any cost.”
The Kurdish authorities accused the Popular Mobilization Forces (PMF) of massing fighters in two mainly Shiite Turkmen areas south of Kirkuk in readiness for an attack.
Hawrami urged the international community to intervene and call on the Iraqi prime minister to “order PMF to pull back if he can or if they listen to him.”
KRG authorities have repeatedly called for negotiations since the referendum, in which an overwhelming majority voted for independence. Baghdad has ruled out talks unless the KRG renounces the referendum results.
Kirkuk lies just outside the KRG autonomous territory but Peshmerga forces moved in when the Iraqi Army collapsed in the face of a Daesh onslaught in 2014, preventing the region’s oil fields from falling under terrorist control.
Germany, which has traditionally good ties with both Baghdad and the KRG, called for steps to ease the tensions.
“We would like to ask them to meet those responsibilities and not to escalate the conflict,” German government spokesman Steffen Seibert told reporters in Berlin.
Iraq’s tough line toward the Kurds has the support of neighbors Turkey and Iran, which strongly oppose the secessionist movement given their own sizable Kurdish minorities.
President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s spokesman said on Thursday Turkey would gradually close border crossings with northern Iraq in coordination with the central Iraqi government and Iran.
The area around Al-Qaim, near the Syrian border, is the last part of Iraq still under the control of Daesh, which overran a third of the country in 2014 but has been driven back by a series of Iraqi military offensives with US support.